What About Now?
by ipacacdoll
Summary: A Sex and Mockery era oneshot


Derek breathed deeply, trying to catch his breath as his arm curled around Meredith's body. They lay in silence, scared of the unspoken words, scared that they would break the bond that was shared between them. Instead of using words, Derek just closed his eyes, and enjoyed the feel of Meredith's body beside him, knowing that soon he would be left alone with just the hazy memory of this moment.

Her hair fanned the pillow, and her skin felt soft against his hand as he drew a lazy pattern on it. Lavender- her hair had that faint yet delicate smell from her conditioner, the one he'd never forget, and the curve of her hip felt safe and familiar against his hand. He stretched his neck, his lips reaching for her jaw to kiss her, taking advantage that she was still in his bed in the trailer, and wasn't pulling on her jeans right now. But it wasn't enough. This would never be enough. He wanted this feeling forever. This was the furthest from casual sex he could get- she wasn't just a fuck buddy, she was his everything.

"Derek…" She sighed, moving her jaw away from his lips, her fingers curling around his to take his hand off her stomach and place on the bed.

They were having that conversation again. The one where Derek tried to insist that the sex was more than instant gratification, and the mockery was more than just a wry laugh. This happened every single time- and every single time it ended the same way- with Derek feeling like they were further apart than ever.

"Meredith…" He said, reaching for her, but she was too quick and his fingers were inches from her back as she slid out of the bed, picking up her jeans and shirt that she had left on the floor.

He just lay there, watching her as she dressed. She always dressed quickly now, scared of what would happen if she stayed naked for longer. She had her back turned to him as she slipped on her underwear and pulled her shirt on. She never used to hide her body from him- after the first morning they had never been embarrassed- the whole getting dressed thing had been another kind of foreplay, but now it was just Meredith getting further and further away from him.

"Stay." He tried to be assertive, but he knew it came out like pleading. And truth be told he was. He would get on his knees and beg for her to stay with him that night if he thought it would actually work. But he knew it wouldn't, because Meredith couldn't take knowing that he loved her that much.

"Don't…" She groaned, shrugging her shoulders as if she was in pain. Just like the time she admitted she missed him in the elevator after he got back with Addison, and he had gotten so close she could feel his lips on the back of his neck, his nose barely teasing the wisps of hair falling out of her ponytail- but he had pulled away, and she felt like she'd been burned. And rejecting Derek's pleas burned her every time, he could tell.

"It's late. I worry about you." He tried again.

She turned around and scoffed. "Right. Whatever did I do without you in my life Derek? I'll be fine. I'm always fine."

_She's always fine._

There was so much that seemed so damage between the two of them, Derek wondered how they ever pretended it was alright. He wondered why they kept going back for more and more even though they hurt each other so much. But he knew it was her defence mechanism- push them away before they do it to you. She was so busy pushing him away, she didn't notice him reaching.

When would he realise his worrying suffocated her? He said he didn't want to breathe for her, and then he complained that she wouldn't let him in. She just didn't know where she stood anymore, and this was her taking control of the situation. This was the distance she needed- no expectations, no obligations, yet they weren't strangers. It was all she could handle at the moment, with all the best bits of their relationship without the confusion and suffocation.

-X-

They had woken up in separate beds, the other side empty, waiting to be occupied by the missing person. Meredith's hand ran across the cool sheets, the image of Derek's sleeping form flashing in her mind for a second. She had wanted him there, his warm body weighing down the mattress, his hand reaching for her in his sleep. But it couldn't be as simple as that, because once he woke up, he would talk, and his desires and expectations would stifle her. She couldn't give him the lifetime he wanted, she couldn't promise him a forever, and until she could, she couldn't give him any false hope.

Sometimes you had to be cruel to be kind.

He could sense her approaching him even though he had his back turned from her. Even if they weren't a couple, they still had that connection between them that would never go away. It was an inexplicable crackle of energy that sizzled between them, an unspoken force that was as much destruction as it was love- a passion.

"Hey…" Meredith said softly, hoping they could leave whatever happened yesterday exactly where it belonged-in the past.

Usually, Derek would have smiled and flirted back, but this morning her softly-spoken greeting was grating. Last night, she had just left him even though he begged her to stay, after they had shown each other the most intimate sides of themselves. She had fled all the potential love he could give to her, and now suddenly she was acting as if everything was alright. But the rejection had stung Derek and left him a bitter taste in his mouth.

"Good Morning." He replied in a cordial tone. But Meredith knew him, and to her it sounded cold and distant. Who could really blame him? She had ruthlessly left him in the middle of the night, hoping sleeping in her own bed would bring her refuge from the confusing thoughts in her head, only for the thoughts to get more complicated when she didn't have Derek's arms to fall into. If she knew what she wanted, it would have been easy. But with a relationship with Derek came expectations, ones she wasn't sure she could live up to. She didn't know how to promise any of that 'white picket fence' future Derek wanted, she didn't even know how to promise to stay with him the whole night. She was so damaged. And he deserved more. In a way, he knew he deserved more. That's why he wanted to change her, into someone who was happier than she was, someone who didn't just hope for a happy future but thought they deserved one.

If he knew the real her, it would scare him. If he knew that she watched the bright red blood seep out of her mother's wrists and drip onto the kitchen floor when she was five, he'd know why she couldn't bear to lose him. She was so scared of the thought of losing him again that it seemed like a better option to never really have him.

She would take what she could get.

"Derek…"

Her voice melted his resolve. It was soft and sweet, with a hint of vulnerability. Because of the words she didn't say, he tried to squeeze all the meaning he could out of the words she did say. In those two syllables there was an unspoken apology for pushing him away, an offer for a clean slate, for today being a new day. He looked up from his chart to look into her eyes, his hard expression unravelling as the corners of his mouth curled up slightly.

Her delicate fingers brushed away the hair from her face as she looked at him with hope that he would forgive her harsh words from last night. She was giving him everything she could, even if it wasn't much. There was too much about her that was damaged, and she didn't have anything to give her any optimism. She stepped closer towards him, the specks of green in her eyes shining even under the fluorescent hospital lights.

"How about you meet me at my house at eight? Bring something to eat, we could uh…maybe have dinner together?" she bit her lip, her fingers absently playing with the sleeves of her white coat.

He knew that she was giving him this tiny thing to go on, and he was grateful. He grinned. "Sex and mockery is graduating to dinner as well now?"

She smirked back. "Well. A girl's gotta eat- and the grilled cheese is getting old."

And just like that, she disappeared down the hallway, walking quickly, almost as though if she stayed there any longer, she'd get herself into more of a situation than she could handle.

-X-

Their cutlery clinked against the porcelain plates as they ate dinner, sharing their first meal in a long time. It was almost too easy for Derek to forget that for the past two months the only way he could get near Meredith was by agreeing to an arrangement he didn't agree with. Sometimes, he thought he had been too harsh to Meredith considering the year they had, but everything she had been through in the past year, he had been there with her. He couldn't understand why she didn't see that he wasn't asking her to magically get whole and healed from the damage throughout her life- he just wanted her to share it with him and be open and honest about it, instead of hiding it all. Of course, that was what the sex and mockery was about- but Derek couldn't help that all the sex and mockery was doing was making a mockery out of their love.

"So basically, Hahn hates Cristina's guts, which makes Cristina even meaner than usual…" Meredith trailed off, sipping the last few drops of wine from her glass.

"So what's next?" Derek asked, wiping the sides of his mouth with a napkin, before scrunching it up and throwing it onto his plate.

"Well- there's no dessert. Maybe some rubbery old coffee ice cream in the freezer from months ago…"

"I mean- with us. What are we doing? Because some people would call this a relationship."

Those words echoed in Meredith's brain, from a time in the past. A time when they were going to set out rules, from when Meredith thought Derek was a single man with no strings- except he was hiding a very thick rope around his neck in the form of a wife. That was another reason why she resisted. He was the one who jeopardised what they had first, he was the one who damaged their relationship. But this wasn't a competition- no one had to win this. It was more profound than that.

"I don't think I'll ever be the person you want me to be, Derek. Do you actually _want_ to have a relationship with me?" Meredith asked him doubtfully, twisting her napkin around her fingers. She was scared of the definition of what a relationship was supposed to be, having failed miserably at it before. She wanted all the components of the relationship practically, without having any of the pressure. And underneath all that fear of not knowing how to be in a relationship lay the insecurity that she didn't know what he wanted from her, how she should act, or talk, for them to be something more than a casual dinner and casual sex.

That question burned him, and made him recoil, as he leaned back in his seat, sighing deeply. No doubt, he played his role in bringing them to the point where they were now- it literally hurt him to admit that to himself—that he was clinging onto this totally crappy arrangement of sex because he drove her to this inability to believe in commitment. He realised that through the sex and mockery and the possibility of losing everything he had with her, that maybe the person he wanted her to be was the person she was.

"Of course I do…" He said softly, placing his hand in the no-man's land area of the dining table. "I know, I know it may not have seemed like I do at times, and I know… that I haven't been as supportive as I should have been of what you were going through, and you weren't in a mental state to give me what I wanted… but you know- we can change."

Meredith laughed wrly. "I wanted things to go back to the way things were- you know, before Addison. But we already had a do-over once before, and that didn't work, and I don't know how to do this, and there's too much water under the thing or whatever, but all I know is that I need you, in any way I can get you. Even if you can't have a relationship with me because I'm too fucked up, I want you. I know it's pathetic and I know it's not enough for you…"

Derek swallowed the lump that was forming in his throat as Meredith clumsily tried to explain what she was feeling. "God knows if I could I would turn back time, but we can't Meredith. That's the problem. We have to carry around the baggage and the scars we have got. You're not the girl in a bar anymore and I'm not the guy. There's so much more to this than that now. We have to take this and make into something new."

Meredith nodded in realisation. "It's ok if things change. Not… there shouldn't be any pressure to get back to something we had before- we have changed. We should allow for that. I'm not the same me. And you're not the same you. But I think… I still…"

The wooden legs of Derek's chair scraped against the tile on the kitchen floor as he pushed it back as he stood up, walking around the table, crouching down to meet his eyes with hers. "I think we can do an ok job of that…" He whispered, his lips inching closer to hers, relieving her of her struggle to find words.

The touch of their lips after they had their first honest talk in months fuelled Derek with an overwhelming need to be connected to Meredith as strongly as possible. He kissed her softly, his skin lingering on hers, thinking about nothing as they tried to heal whatever wounds were left open. His arms looped around her torso as her fingers found the collar of his shirt, and he lifted himself up, bringing Meredith to a standing position with him. His hands slid to that favourite part of her, that downward slope of her waist into a shallow 'V' where his hands fitted perfectly. She instinctively pressed herself against him, her weight and warmth urging him on, her hands wandering down his back across the soft cotton of his shirt, with an eagerness of love.

He tore his lips away from hers, and she inhaled deeply, as if she had run out of air, and he scattered kisses along the long line of her neck. His gaze fell onto her flushed face. "I love you…" He whispered reverently, his voice cracking with passion.

_You. He loves you._

He loved her. She had told him that she might not be able to be any of those things he said he wanted at the elevator a few weeks ago, and he loved her anyway. She was grateful he said it, almost needing to match the words spoken out loud to the words his eyes told her every time. When Derek looked at her with that kind of intensity, making her feel like nothing else mattered, in that moment, she couldn't help but feel loved. For those twenty minutes together, it wasn't about wives, or dead mommys, or drownings, or angry words it was just them, in their most simplest and honest forms. They weren't trying to hide feelings, or burdened by words they didn't dare say, but instead shared themselves with each other.

His thumb swept across her soft cheek, and she followed him as he held her hand tightly in his and pulled her gently up the stairs to her bedroom- to a bedroom they had mostly shared. The streaky streetlights streamed through the thin voile drapes across the messily-made bed as he gently pushed her onto the bed, climbing onto it himself, his knees sinking into the mattress slightly as he kneeled above her. Derek moved slowly, smiling widely as Meredith shivered as each piece of clothing was delicately peeled off by his fingers. She leaned into his touch, unable to stand his almost teasing as each layer came off. He was in no rush, he wanted to savour the warm feeling of her skin in the darkness. He had missed her.

Meredith anticipated the pressure of his touch on her skin, the feel of his body slowly pressing into hers. Had it really been only twenty four hours since they had been doing this before? Because it felt like longer, it had felt like forever since he had kissed her in that tickly bit just below her ear, and that cute humming sound that hitched low in his throat when her fingers inched lower, along that little trail of hair from his navel downwards. She loved that she could do this to him. She loved him. And soon, whatever of the barriers they had up for each other came crashing down.

Afterward, they lay together, her legs wrapped around his, their skin burning against each other as they gulped down the oxygen they had seemed deprived of seconds before. Meredith's lips felt hot and swollen as Derek pulled her towards him closer, wrapping his arm around her protectively. He didn't speak, not wanting this moment to end, never wanting to let go, knowing he wouldn't get kicked out of this warm cocoon they had created for themselves.

Meredith's damp forehead slumped against Derek's bare chest, feeling it rise and fall in a steady rhythm as sleep beckoned him. Maybe this was love-it was wild, like a fire burning underneath the rain- it wasn't like the movies where everything goes right. It was complicated and messy and incomprehensible. Maybe it was being together even when at times there didn't seem like any sensible reason why. When she was sure he was asleep, she whispered _'_ _I love you'_ into his chest, in case she couldn't say it again.

Derek smiled in his sleep, subconsciously holding her tighter as he wordlessly said it back.

_**Shadows fill an empty heart  
As love is fading,  
From all the things that we are  
But are not saying.  
Can we see beyond the scars  
And make it to the dawn?**_

Change the colors of the sky.  
And open up to  
The ways you made me feel alive,  
The ways I loved you.  
For all the things that never died,  
To make it through the night,  
Love will find you.

What about now?  
What about today?  
What if you're making me all that I was meant to be?  
What if our love never went away?  
What if it's lost behind words we could never find?  
Baby, before it's too late,  
What about now?

The sun is breaking in your eyes  
To start a new day.  
This broken heart can still survive  
With a touch of your grace.  
Shadows fade into the light.  
I am by your side,  
Where love will find you.

What about now?  
What about today?  
What if you're making me all that I was meant to be?  
What if our love, it never went away?  
What if it's lost behind words we could never find?  
Baby, before it's too late,  
What about now?

Now that we're here,  
Now that we've come this far,  
Just hold on.  
There is nothing to fear,  
For I am right beside you.  
For all my life,  
I am yours.

What about now?  
What about today?  
What if you're making me all that I was meant to be?  
What if our love never went away?  
What if it's lost behind words we could never find?  
Baby, before it's too late,  
What about now?  



End file.
